NASA's James Webb inspected the Phantom Galaxy's heart, revealing delicate filaments hidden from Hubble

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope captured the heart of M74, the Phantom Galaxy, about 32 million light-years away in Pisces. Webb's infrared vision revealed delicate filaments of gas and dust in the galaxy's well-defined spiral arms, while a lack of gas near its center gave an unobscured view of the dense star cluster there. Combining Webb's data with earlier Hubble observations, astronomers produced a composite image showing dust in red, young stars in blue, and older stars in yellow — together creating a distinctive greenish glow at the galaxy's heart. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee (NOIRLab) and the PHANGS-JWST Team; ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Chandar; A. Pagan (STScI); N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb); Acknowledgement: J. Schmidt